Alice Menzies

"The Pine Creek Motel has seen better days. Henny would call it charming, but she's always seen the best in things. Like now, when she's just met an untimely end crossing the road. She's not going to let a tiny thing like death stop her from living fully - not when her friends and family need her the most. After the funeral is over, her body is buried, and the last casserole dish is empty, Henny is still around. She's not sure why, but she realizes...

"Things My Son Needs to Know About the World collects the personal dispatches from the front lines of one of the most daunting experiences any man can experience: fatherhood. As he conveys his profound awe at experiencing all the "firsts" that fill him with wonder and catch him completely unprepared, Fredrik Backman doesn't shy away from revealing his own false steps and fatherly flaws, tackling issues both great and small, from masculinity and mid-life...

Sixteen-year-old Jenny Lind is kidnapped in broad daylight on her way home from school and thrown into the back of a truck. She’s taken to a dilapidated house, where she and other girls face horrors far beyond their worst nightmares. Though they’re desperate to escape, their captor foils everyone of their attempts. Five years later, Jenny’s body is found hanging in a playground, strung up with a winch on a rainy night. As the police are scrambling...

"Police detective Hannah Duncker didn't expect to return to her native land. She fled after her father's murder conviction and returned to make peace with her shame. She has a new job with the local police and a nosy new partner. When a fifteen-year-old's death catapults her into a murder investigation that resurrects ghosts from her previous life, she hunts for the truth and must confront the people she abandoned. Not all are pleased to see her back...

"When a dead man is found locked in the basement of an abandoned house, deep in the woods, there is no evidence of what happened beyond his name - scratched into the wall before he died. The regional police can't find anyone who knew him. But no-one knows the locals like Detective Eira Sjöden. When her expert knowledge of her home town is again called in, she knows one of them must have seen something. Before she can uncover the truth, though, someone...

"In the tradition of modern classics The Dinner and A Gentleman in Moscow comes The Waiter, in which the finely tuned balance of a grand European restaurant (that has seen better days) is irrevocably upset by an unexpected guest. In a centuries-old European restaurant called The Hills, a middle-aged waiter takes pride in the unchangeable aspects of his job: the well-worn uniform, the ragged but solid tablecloths, and the regular diners. Some are there...

Six former friends are forced to relive their deadly past in this psychologically charged and suspenseful locked-room mystery. Old friends. Old grudges. One evening back together again. The last time they all had dinner, someone wound up dead. What could go wrong? Sophie Lind hasn't seen her college friends in a decade when a dinner invitation from one of the friends, Ava, arrives on her doorstep. They used to all be inseparable, meeting for dinner...

Sami has a new child to provide for, so after years of petty crime, he's training as a chef. But when a business deal suddenly goes sideways, Sami is left wondering how he'll ever provide for his newborn daughter. Michel and his family fled a bloody civil war in Lebanon, and he grew up in the suburbs of Stockholm surrounded by poverty and criminals. He's trying to turn over a new leaf, but the past just won't let him go. Niklas has traveled the...

"Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy's funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist--even if they don't understand her peculiar need for books. Marooned in a farm town that's almost beyond repair, Sara starts a bookstore in honor of her friend's memory. All she wants...